Raiders and 49ers proving that the preseason means something, I hate to say

Sorry to inform the NFL universe of this, and especially Raider Nation, but it’s true:
We saw big bites of the real future when looking closely and carefully at the Raider and 49er exhibition activities this summer. Let me emphasize the words closely and carefully. Important words here.
My infamous, often-outraged pal, whom I’ll call Mark Madness, blistered me several times in July and August for suggesting that the Raiders’ offense could be legendarily awful this year and the 49ers were sharper and improved because of what I saw at training camp and in the exhibitions.
“It means nothing!” the voice of Madness implored. “You might be right, but you can’t decide that by fake games!”
MM is a very smart guy. He has a point about over-analyzing almost everything that goes on in NFL fake games.
But he missed the bigger preseason picture, which I was only too glad to argue then and back up with hard evidence now:

* Yes, forget the exhibition won-loss records. Delete them. They’re meaningless. Raiders were 4-1 (I think, because I don’t even want to check, I forget them instantly); 49ers were 2-2.
Basically, delete everything you see after halftime in any exhibition. Unless you really care about the roster fight for special teams jobs.
MM is right about the winning and losing in preseason. That’s about third-string QBs rallying or screwing up against fourth-string LBs and DBs and new coaches trying to justify their hirings.
Stupid stuff.

* Concentrate on what the Raiders and 49ers were trying to accomplish in the summer. —Raiders with new/old Coach Art Shell: Try to establish a sense of discipline and responsibility, get the offense under coordinator Tom Walsh running smoothly and utilizing Randy Moss and a power running game, fix the offensive line, get the QB situation straightened out with either Aaron Brooks or Andrew Walter, get the first-team defense put together from shards of last season.
None of that happened in exhibition season–maybe the defense was OK–and those key things were the ones that unraveled in mighty ways in the days leading up to and in the middle of the Raiders’ one-and-done-for-2006 devastation at home to San Diego on Monday night.
I saw that in one day of practice at Napa and I saw it in every exhibition performance by the first-teamers. Jerry Porter going off the reservation was only the first, bad sign.
Things were loose. Brooks was erratic. Walsh was way, way, way over his head–he was a nothing coordinator in the early-1990s, so how could he be any good after taking all those years off? The offensive line is unbelievably porous. Shell hoped he could get the stuff done just by saying it and by having people write it.
Nope, doesn’t work that way.
Eliminate the record. Is what I just typed in the last two paragraphs what we really saw in the Raider preseason? Yes, it was. Which equals: 27-0 San Diego, with another bad one looming for the Raiders on Sunday in Baltimore.

–49ers in Mike Nolan’s second season: Try to speed up Alex Smith’s development, get new offensive coordinator Norv Turner to rev up the offense and utilize Antonio Bryant and Vernon Davis, get the offensive line hammered out, try to figure out how the defense works without Julian Peterson and Andre Carter.
A lot of that happened in bits and pieces in the preseason, with the huge exception of putting a sharp, solid first-team defense on the field. Ask Bill Walsh about what he saw out of the 49er offense. He called half the phone book, I think, after the Chicago game.
Which all added up to: Arizona’s 34-27 victory in Week 1, but a nice battle by the 49ers.
Smith, obviously, is a different player than the 2005 nightmare. I could tell that from one practice and one game–specifically, the Chicago exhibition game. Just a different player. Not a great QB. But not a scampering, flustered disaster, either.
Turner, Shell’s Raider predecessor, by the way, has the 49er offense looking like it has plans and energy–which you could not say for Mike McCarthy’s offensive vision last year.
And McCarthy is doing wonders for Green Bay now. Will he author the two worst season-long offensive performances in the modern history of the NFL, back to back?

I’m not saying that the Raiders and 49ers’ fates have been already decided one week into the 2006 regular season. Long, long season. Much can change. Good teams can blow up in a second and bad ones revive in a blink.
But, sorry Mark Madness, and sorry to everyone who doesn’t want to pay attention to lousy exhibition games… if you watch closely and wisely, and know how to use that fast-forward button, those games and practices do tell you a lot.
They tell you who is spinning a story, and who actually is getting work done. They tell you that Week 1 of the regular season–and Week 2, and Week 3 and so on–isn’t a start out of whole cloth.
Sorry everybody, but the fake games and hot practices are the clues to almost everything.

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But hey, who am I to talk? I went 0-3 vs. the spread in Week 1. I hope Tom Walsh and Shell know that, too.